Clitic climbing

Abstract

In verbal periphrases, Romance clitics either climb to the inflected verb or remain attached to the non-finite verb. The chapter argues that climbing depends on the point where auxiliaries—including restructuring predicates—are merged. Since the incorporation of clitics takes place in a clause-intermediate position (e.g. Ledgeway and Lombardi 2005), climbing does not take place when auxiliaries are first merged above the locus of incorporation. The same analysis is then extended to perfective auxiliaries in order to account for the dialects in which clitics do not climb in compound tenses and, lastly, for the dialects in which clitics never climb. The second part of the chapter focuses on the complicated system of clitic placement of Sanvalentinese, a southern Italian dialect in which optional climbing interacts with a kind of V2 requirement targeting both the I and V domain.